Garden Successes

I'm sure you are sick to death of pictures of our lawn. Sorry about that! But I wanted to show you some of the work I did yesterday. I pulled out all the spent forget-me-nots that would have been on the left-hand side in the photo above, and mowed the grass around the edge of the flower bed. That will give more light and air to the plants there, which were buried in tall grass and forget-me-nots. I also did some weeding (that darned dock!!) in the middle, and ultimately filled two yard-waste bags with trimmings. I feel like I accomplished a lot, even if it's not evident to the casual observer.

As I've said before, our garden creates a ridiculous quantity of what my marine-biologist friend Liz would call "biomass." It's amazing how much grows over the course of a season.

I did a lot of other stuff yesterday, too.

First of all, remember how my white Christmas cactus (from reader Frances) got root rot? At the time I took cuttings and replanted them in fresh soil. Well, they're showing new growth, as are the sprigs of my salmon-colored cactus. So it looks like they've rooted and I've salvaged both of those plants. Whew!

This is what's called the "side return" of our house. The gate at the end leads to the street. This area was littered with construction detritus -- brick dust, chunks of pebble dashing, old roofing nails -- from the various projects the Russians have done upstairs (as well as our recent shed roof repair). I swept it clean and threw out a big bag of debris, and weeded some of the campanula from the edges. I probably should pull all those weeds, but it's nice to have a little greenery there, and they have purple flowers in the summer. I'll weed in the fall.

This is a Nicotiana that Dave bought at Waitrose not too long ago. I cleaned out the weed-filled planter at the side of the house and planted it there, where it will get lots of sun. (The shards will keep the squirrels from uprooting it, ideally.)

A couple of weekends ago I dug our one remaining foam flower (Tiarella) out of our flower beds and put it in a pot -- it was so deeply buried beneath some big ferns that I had trouble finding it, and it wasn't getting any light or air. It has since sprouted new leaves and seems very happy. And we can see it -- big plus!

I also staked up the leaning rose, using the heavy-duty tree stakes and rope I bought from Amazon. It seemed very secure but we had rain all night, and when I woke up early this morning the rose was leaning again. I haven't been able to tell whether the stakes pulled out or what. I had to wake up Dave to help me put the chair back in place as a brace. "We're definitely cutting this f*cker down," he said.

(Don't worry -- I'm continuing my campaign to save it.)

All our dahlias are also showing growth, and our canna lilies have sent up a single shoot. I'd feared they were dead because they've been dormant until now. Woo hoo!

Last night, Dave and I went out to a restaurant in Shoreditch where the main claim to fame is whole turbot, served with the head on. We went with two of our co-workers, and the four of us split one turbot and got a variety of other entrees and side dishes as well. We had fun but I think Dave and I both came away thinking we'd spent a lot of money on good but not mind-blowing food. I did love the olive oil ice cream!